The Palace Beautiful eBook

“I want to see the editor of The Joy-bell,”
asked Jasmine, in as firm a tone as she could command.

The red-haired boy raised his eyes from a huge ledger
which he was pretending to occupy himself over, and
said, “Can’t see him,” in a laconic
tone, and dropped his eyes again.

“But why?” asked Jasmine, somewhat indignantly.
“I have particular business with him; it is
most necessary that I should see him. Pray, let
him know that I am here.”

“Very sorry,” replied the boy, “but
can’t.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause he ain’t in town.”

“Oh!”

Poor Jasmine fell back a pace or two; then she resumed
in a different tone—­

“I am very much disappointed; there is a story
of mine in The Joy-bell, and I wanted to speak
to him about it. It was very important, indeed,”
she added, in so sad a voice that the red-haired boy
gazed at her in some astonishment.

“My word,” he said, “then you do
not know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“Why, we has had a funeral here.”

“A funeral—­oh, dear! oh, dear! is
the editor of The Joy-bell dead?”

Here the red-haired boy burst into a peal of irrepressible
laughter.

“Dead! he ain’t dead, but The Joy-bell
is; we had her funeral last week.”

Poor Jasmine staggered against the wall, and her pretty
face became ghastly white.

“Oh, boy,” she said, “do tell me
about it; how can The Joy-bell be dead, and
have a funeral? Oh, please, don’t jest with
me, for it’s so important.”

The genuine distress in her tones touched at last
some vulnerable point in the facetious office-boy’s
breast.

“I’m real sorry for you, miss,”
he said, “particular as you seems so cut up;
but what I tell you is true, and you had better know
it. That editor has gone, and The Joy-bell
is decently interred. I was at her birth, and
I was at her funeral. She had a short life, and
was never up to much. I never guessed she’d
hold out as long as she did; but the editor was a
cute one, and for a time he bamboozled his authors,
and managed to live on them. Yes, The Joy-bell
is in her quiet grave at last, and can’t do
no more harm to nobody. Lor’, miss, I wouldn’t
take on if I was you, you’d soon get accustomed
to it if you had a desk at an office like this.
In at the births, and in at the deaths am I, and I
don’t make no count of one or t’other.
Why, now, there was The Stranger—­which
went in for pictorial get up, and was truly elegant—­it
only lasted six months; and there was The Ocean
Wave, which did not even live as long. And
there was Merrie Lassie—­oh, their
names is legion. We’ll have another started
in no time. So you must be going, miss?
Well, good morning. If I was you, miss, I wouldn’t
send no more stories to this yere office.”